


rara avis

by agonies (Hyb)



Series: isolated incidents [6]
Category: Chungha (Musician), Monsta X (Band), SEVENTEEN (Band), Sunmi (Korea Musician), 余污 - 肉包不吃肉 | Remnants of Filth - Ròu Bāo Bù Chī Ròu
Genre: (if we say shownu is a professor then by gosh he's a professor), (jigyu/minshua hunger extras), (yuwu au but barely), Alternate Universe - Ballet, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Historical, Fae & Fairies, Monster Hunters, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-02-23 14:01:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23812657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyb/pseuds/agonies
Summary: cc prompts & other oddities1) soonchan + ballet [These are the rules to working with your ex]2) sunmi/chungha + hunters [Sunmi has never seen her cry]3) gu mang/mo xi + disappear [Gu Mang expects it comes easier to him than to most]4) jihoon/mingyu/joshua + loyalty [Jihoon has never betrayed his king's confidence]5) showho + dagger [Hyunwoo was a soldier before he was a scholar]
Series: isolated incidents [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1410364
Comments: 7
Kudos: 54





	1. soonchan + ballet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: soonchan after dance practice juiceyo

These are the rules to working with your ex. Soonyoung doesn't write them down, because he's seen spy movies and he knows how that would go, but he commits them to memory.

First, he's never alone with Chan. He times his commute to roll into rehearsal just a hair late, which means he'll be stuck in the back of the studio unless Taemin calls him to the front row with the other principals where he belongs. Chan is always on time, though he never used to be at their old company. People change, maybe. Chan wears his hair longer now, his shoulders are broader, hard cut like Soonyoung could break his teeth on them. 

Second, he doesn't wait to be cornered. If they're stranded together so close he can smell Chan's cologne (another thing that's changed in the two years, four months they didn't see each other: he used to smell like Soonyoung's shampoo) he'll offer to help him stretch first, like it's no big deal, and he doesn't waver when Chan's thumb grazes the back of his knee. He doesn't ask Chan what he's thinking, when he goes dark eyed and intent. Soonyoung is remembering a hard hand on the back of his neck, how they learned how to give head from each other, and then how Chan would hook a thumb inside him beside his cock and mimic the punched out little sounds he made in their bed. He doesn't need to know if Chan is remembering, too.

Three, he doesn't talk like they're friends. Oh, he talks, he talks about what's good on television and a great DJ he saw his last night off and he talks about the fall program, but he doesn't ask Chan how his mom's doing, is he seeing anyone, or what the fuck he's doing here. Soonyoung was the one who moved to a smaller company for a clean break. He carved himself out of his own life and left it to him, the apartment, the hamster, the good umbrella that doesn’t jam and the immersion blender, too. 

Four, don't think about your ex while you're with someone else, while you’re screwing them into the headboard and for just a heartbeat you forget who’s panting past your ear. He's trying— he's trying. He has to watch Chan dance again, share his ragged breaths on stage when their faces are painted and they're all but naked and he knows how the seam of his quadricep would taste under his tongue, how the dip of his waist feels under his palm. Chan has always been— himself. Impossible to forget.

Of course Chan breaks the rules. He always does. Soonyoung feels sometimes like his life is a game of checkers and he's losing, while Chan is playing chess, leaping around him according to patterns Soonyoung can't even see. It was like that, the first time Chan kissed him, tugging him down by the collar in a hushed stairwell while Soonyoung was peering through the frosted glass window for signs of rain.

_I heard you got an offer from Beijing,_ he says when they're cooling down. Chan is scraping his sweat damp hair back, the tight curve of his bicep such that Soonyoung can only think of the ticklish, offended noise he'd make if he licked his armpit, and so he forgets his rules.

_Yeah,_ Chan answers, unsurprised, and he doesn't blink. He waits. 

And Soonyoung remembers how air enters the lungs, how it's meant to leave again. _So are you going,_ he asks. _It's a big deal._

_You're not in Beijing,_ Chan says, not quite smiling. Like his face hurts. _Anything else?_


	2. sunmi/chungha + monsters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: sunha, "kill what you can't save"

When Sunmi is twenty, Chungha is sixteen, and she talks too much and has less sense of self-preservation than a squirrel in traffic. She ought to be more strict with her, should send her back to the bunker with the children. But there are no casual demon hunters, no one ever finds this life for the entertainment. Sunmi has never seen her cry, not even when they were both much younger, but back then Chungha didn't speak for almost two years. So she lets her talk, now, as much as she wants, lets her get in the way and teaches her how to shoot even though she's too young, teaches her when to use silver and when rowan wood or holy water.

When Sunmi is twenty-four, Chungha is sitting on the hood of her car drinking cheap wine with a straw, changing hands so Sunmi can scrub blood that's not her own from her knuckles, her fragile wrists. She still gets quiet, sometimes. Times like this, and the air hums with unsung thunder and Sunmi averts her eyes. There is no more bunker. There is nowhere else to go. They sleep in the car and Chungha holds her bare ankle like a lifeline.

When Sunmi is twenty-five she wakes up in a pine box, though she should have been burnt. She knows what Chungha must have done even before she meets fresh air again. She tries to shout at her, hoarse, and Chungha kisses her just like she taught her how to land a punch. She doesn't apologize. The deal says one year, just one year to live in exchange, and Chungha smiles with blood in her teeth. 

_ A year, _ she laughs, and no warrior angel deserves the name when she glows like this in the sunset, all her dark hair edged ember red. _ What am I, an amateur. _

When Sunmi is reborn not quite a year, eleven months and a dark moon, she finds her again. Cold to the touch. Her teeth are very sharp. When she smiles, later, it's Sunmi's blood in her mouth. Her eyes are brighter than they've ever been, defiant constellations of meaning. 

_ Nobody gets to take you away from me, _ she sighs against Sunmi's hair, hands trailing ice under her blouse.  _ Didn't I promise you? _

(You owe me this, Sunmi says in her prayers. Just this. Only her.)


	3. gu mang/mo xi + disappear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: ximang, "for you, I'd do it all again"

Gu Mang expects it comes easier to him than to most, disappearing. He has no family living to disappoint, and what remains of his infernal bloodline is best unmentioned. Maybe someday devils will come to collect him, to meet his father, and find only memories of him caved inward like eggshells, a void where Gu Mang lived and came of age, learned the sword and led men and kissed a boy who burned to touch, who didn't know how to lie. 

When he is young he doesn't know better, and he doesn't believe in demons. There are men enough to fear. But he makes a name, patient, makes soldiers from poor boys no one ever bothered to train like they would survive the campaign. Sometimes pretty girls don't mind that he has no title, no money, and they let him take their hair down and stay until morning anyway. He travels with the army, and so he tends not to see them again. He doesn't mind. They don't make any promises they can't keep.

He doesn't know what will happen to Mo Xi, not the first time. He's occupied trying not to cry, which happens anyway, and then trying not to beg, which follows soon after. No one has ever touched him like their life depended on it, like they would go to war in the morning just to be with him in the night. Mo Xi is shy under his sternness, too strong, too earnest. At first Gu Mang thinks the illness spreading through the camp has taken him, with his chills and pallor. But they have rest in the autumn, and he doesn't see Mo Xi for months. Afterward he seems himself again, a flicker of blood warm color to his skin (more, when they're alone, when Gu Mang trails his fingertips up his sleeves to the cradle of his arms where the veins run like rivers and teases him, the princess returned to him).

Later, Gu Mang makes a habit of turning him away unsatisfied as often as he offers up his thighs and kisses the frown from the corner of Mo Xi's eyes. He counts by the waning of the moon, and hopes he is a fool, superstitious, prone to wild notions. But Mo Xi is haggard and unwell when he sees him too often, when he opens up Gu Mang's body like a mystery. He gets better, when he stays away. He doesn't faint in the sun, a man like that, or scrub away nosebleeds.

Once he would have said there was no escape in his life. Yet it's simpler than he imagines, with the correct incentive. Killing Murong Lian is like an afterthought. Some days, when he watches the sea at dawn, he forgets, and then remembers again like a stranger left all that blood behind. His hair grows shaggy with wind and salt and he ties it back. Mo Xi would have brushed it, clumsily, intently, and he can think of him now that he's too far to hurt. He learned the sword, and the spear. The axe and the saw aren't so difficult. His hands map new calluses, and his neighbors bring him honey or eggs in trade for new furniture. Some of them are deserters, or escaped thieves missing a hand. No one asks where he came from and some afternoons are so still and untroubled he imagines he stands at the bottom of a well looking up at a snatch of sky, as remote as the light in Mo Xi's eye when he saw him last, and promised to be waiting for him soon, and the lies came so easily.

His neighbors  _ want _ to ask about his scars, but they refrain. The refraining is harder, when a stranger in all black comes and gives his horse away. He has no sword, but his hands are still a soldier's. 

_ This is where people come to disappear, _ Gu Mang says, friendly, clutching at the doorway of the cottage to hold himself upright. His smile feels wild, mad. He knows what hunger is when he can smell Mo Xi's skin on the wind.  _ I don't even have a name. _

_ Take mine, _ the man who was Mo Xi says. He sounds so cold, if you don't know him. He says,  _ you can have it. Take it all. I don't need it. I heard that young Mo Xi disappeared after the demon Gu Mang, but it's been so long, I'm not certain. Maybe we should stay here, and wait for them. _


	4. joshua/mingyu/jihoon + loyalty (hunger -verse)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: jigyu + loyalty 
> 
> (extras from the [we all have a hunger](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14627222/chapters/33805394) extended universe)
> 
> warnings: mentioned character death

Joshua has held his throne for such a long time. Long before the white hills fell, and long after. When the blue mountain was unshaken to the north, Joshua was devouring smaller kingdoms and weaving them into his own

And when you live so long, one is entitled to particular tastes. Joshua likes his pretty ornaments, likes to drape them in seed pearls and amethyst. It is well understood, when someone belongs to him — no one will lay a finger on them. Not a brush of the sleeve, not even a covetous glance. Joshua does not grant second chances, not in the years since his once prized consort turned back from the battlefield and devoured their own army.

(He has not seen Jaehyun since, and does not know him by this name.)

x

Joshua is very particular about his war prizes. There's a reason there have been no wars under the hills in a mortal lifetime. The feuding kingdoms either form an alliance with the King of Thorns or fall.

As it happens, he's quite appeased these days. A pragmatist would say that he conquered all he could hold in his hands, that he settled a truce with the Queen of Peace and the years since have been quiet. Yet still some might dare to presume his appetites have been slaked — that he has less cause to stray from the luxury of his court, when before he was first among princes at war.

Mingyu was always a knight but not always his.

He served his king well. He was steadfast, obedient. A wonder with a sword. Yet still in that last battle, over the canyon— his enemy's helmet was swept away at some distance and Mingyu, lopping a nameless someone in half, had a moment of stillness that could only be described as revelation. He didn't raise a hand when his king was brought low with a blade to his throat. Mingyu knelt in the mud and was unafraid.

And Joshua paused, bemused. His hair tousled by wind, the blood speckling his cheek not his own.  _ You kneel? _

So Mingyu, in his armor, hands palm upward and empty atop his thighs, sword forgotten, dazed and ready for his end, could only answer,  _ I'd like to look at you just a little while longer. _

He trembled so sweetly for his enemy — not because he couldn't fight back. To struggle seemed foreign, unthinkable, with the waning light in this king’s golden hair as if the sun itself were his crown.

After Joshua beheaded the fallen king, he shoved the bloody fingers of his gauntlet in Mingyu's mouth and the rest is the stuff of songs.

He nursed Mingyu back to health by his own hand. Coincidentally, no one who has laid a finger on Mingyu since has survived. Always Joshua kept lovers and savored their companionship but he has never owned one so surely as Mingyu before. 

For months Mingyu was nude and vulnerable and saw no one but his new sworn lord and what a tender time it was.

Even now, he eats only what Joshua feeds him by hand.

_ You're insufferable when you find a new trinket, do you know that, _ Jihoon wonders, dry and daring as ever. Few still living would have the audacity to speak to Joshua this way. It is a measure of the advisor’s value that he is permitted.

  
_ Does he make you nervous?  _ So he asks unkindly, delighted, knowing Jihoon cannot lie. There is only silence.

x

In the decades since Mingyu came to Joshua's court, the king's rules have been rigidly observed. His prize, his stolen knight, eats only from the king's own hand. It is a time of uneasy peace and vicious little court intrigues, but Mingyu is given a wide and wary berth by even the most curious and troublesome. No one would presume to lay a hand on him and survive; their king does not forgive. And Mingyu stares at him sun-dazzled, just as he was the day they met on the battlefield and he fell to his knees in surrender and awe.

Jihoon, who wears another name in court, has never betrayed his king's confidence. This is how he has survived the centuries, his loyalty beyond reproach.

There's a hateful shine in the royal advisor's eyes, in the hush of the king's bower, when Joshua strokes Mingyu's long hair back from his brow and grants Jihoon permission to touch him. This is what Joshua enjoys most, he thinks, now that his wars are denied him. More subtle and excruciating tests of power, proven by the satisfied gleam of his teeth when Jihoon brushes his thumb over Mingyu's cheek and inhales as if knifed in some vital hollow between his ribs. 

_You knew,_ Jihoon accuses, watching Mingyu kiss his burning palm, upturned face like a gold coin. Knew how Jihoon ached, he means, and how best to torture him with it.

_But you restrained yourself,_ Joshua purrs, pleased, and drops a kiss to the crown of Mingyu's skull. _Both of you. Haven't I always rewarded loyalty?_

  
And Jihoon thinks, deep and cold and sure — _you killed Jeonghan in your bed_. But Mingyu is saying his true name, hopeful, beseeching, and he thinks no more.


	5. showho + dagger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: period au shownu is so beleaguered by [insert occupation here] duties that it's nearing half a decade since he last took someone to bed. his colleagues think him a eunuch, but imagine the shock on their faces when, upon visit to a brothel, an entranced shownu boldly approaches the most decadently buxom whore in sight. in his bed chamber, while he's diligently kissing his name across succulent ivory pectorals, his hand flies up on defensive instinct and catches his once-pliant whore's hand, equipped with a poison-tipped dagger
> 
> [note: all in good fun folks]

Minhyuk loudly speculates that he's only vanished with company as an excuse to stop talking to the rest of them, which doesn't sound unlike Hyunwoo. He prefers to retire early, always shut up in his study, squinting through spectacles when the light is low. (Ever pragmatic, he keeps a tight household and doesn't overuse the gas lanterns or costly beeswax candles the university provides.)

Or maybe the man really is flesh and blood, not just a tangle of equations like Hyunwoo claims all the world is woven from, if you know where to look. Just a man with eyes, and Wonho daubed in perfume, with a plunging neckline and trousers like a second skin, would cause anyone to look twice. Even a man more accustomed to the stately halls of the university, where the statues are draped demurely, none so voluptuous as this. But Hyunwoo doesn't kiss like an academic, either, and his hands are steady unlacing Wonho from the tall satin belt at his waist. (Wonho is the name he gave but then he smiled tightly and said _you can call me anything.)_

But Hyunwoo was a soldier before he was a scholar, and his defense doesn't fail him. Wonho isn't quite as sturdy as he looks, biting off a pained sound when Hyunwoo squeezes his wrist until the bones grind together and he's forced to drop the blade.

It's a small knife, Hyunwoo notes, a touch out of breath, lips swollen with kissing. But he can rather guess why. The question to be asked, when he's wrestled Wonho beneath him and twisted his arms up behind his back at an agonizing angle, is why. Not how Hyunwoo came to be his target, but what was offered that could tempt or frighten Wonho to murder. Slow, agonizing, he drags it out of him. The price, enough to buy a new life. Enough to make someone's past disappear. No names from the ones who hired him, just clandestine meetings and long, anxious silences. 

_And you were naive enough to think they wouldn't kill you afterward,_ Hyunwoo muses, lifting a glass shade and turning the poisoned blade over gas flame, poised with his body between Wonho and the door. _The trouble is, I'd feel responsible if you died for me. And I'm sure you will. So you'll have to be my guest until we sort this out._

  
  


Here is the book of Hoseok’s life unwritten. In which there are conspiracies, academic intrigue, science and religion poised like swords, and Hoseok is trapped within the confines of the university, never far from Hyunwoo's side. The guilt floods back quickly and nearly drowns him. As Hyunwoo deduced, he lacked conviction in his task. He's never hurt anyone before, even. But someone knew enough of the scholar’s tastes as a younger man to gamble on Hoseok’s appeal.

Hoseok wanders the vast libraries of the college now but so much learning in so many languages can’t begin to equal the breathless wonder of lying awake beside Hyunwoo in his bed. Near, for safety, but never touching. Hyunwoo made this very clear. Hoseok thinks he’s never been so aware of his heart leaping up to his throat as this, listening to this man breathe in the dark.

He buys Hoseok a more understated wardrobe that only serves to paint him as immaculate and expensive. It makes him look like a lover, poorly concealed. Hyunwoo doesn’t care. He never cares. He introduces Hoseok as his new assistant in his secretive research, and never talks down to him, not even in private. Hoseok rubs elbows with philosophers and linguists and historians and because the mantle of Hyunwoo's sterling reputation falls over him, they treat him well. He dines in their halls and takes dictation when Hyunwoo’s hand cramps.

A season passes before he dares to kiss Hyunwoo again, and it's even better than he remembers. 

_Imagine how peaceful your life will be when we find who did this,_ he jokes unsteadily, catching his breath and tracing an unsteady hand down Hyunwoo’'s chest. _You won't ever have to see me again._

_I see you even with my eyes closed,_ Hyunwoo says simply. The way he says everything. This is the equation. These are facts. The truth is nothing to fear.

And Hoseok understands this too late, after a night in Hyunwoo’s bed no longer separated by cushions and modesty. It's all he can see, with his chin propped on his hand at the back of the lecture hall, when he's meant to be taking notes. Hyunwoo above him, the grave stitch in his brow as if fucking every whimper and moan out of Hoseok were as meaningful as his studies, as vital to truth and good and all those other words he uses without irony. 

Hoseok tastes his food when he isn't looking, samples even corked bottles of wine, and from a fire in the library and a viper in his bed he saves Hyunwoo’s life twice before he asks if he can stay. Please. Want him to stay.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/hyb_jabbers)   
>  [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/taeminsgucci)


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